Do you think that Thought Scour is still good in this deck? I want to cut 2 for 2 more ancestral visions. Maybe this will mean having to cut one Tasigur, the Golden Fang. However Thought Scour is useful for enabling t2 or 3 tasigur and t3 jace, so i'm not quite sure.
G/R Tron 2-0
I was unhappy to be placed against Tron my first round, but I was able to beat him by not allowing any threats by remanding his search spells and discard. Fall was a house here.
R/W Burn 0-2
I stabalize at too low a life against this deck. One more turn each game and they would have been my games. But burn is our worst matchup.
Affinity 1-2
Game one I got demolished, I mulled to 6 and he drops five cards on turn one with a no lander. Turn two Master of Etherium, with a turn three attack that puts me too far behind to catch up.
Game two he drops turn one Vault Skirge and that's it... A slow start, something I can handle. K-command is an allstar this game, go figure.
Game three it went to the wire. I untap with one life, I need a basic land, bolt, terminate, K-command, or boomerang. Drew a Serum Visions into a Remand, oh well.
Bant Company 1-1
On the ticket I lost this match to give the other guy a 3-1 record so he could get prize. We played two games, the first game took forty minutes. Goblin Darkdwellers finally gets there in the end. The second game we had 7 minutes to play. Since I didn't care about the win, I kept a one lander with a Serum Vision hand that I would normally haved mulled. Collected Company decks are a lot of value and targeted removal just runs out against them. I may try to find a second Damnation for my board as some version of company decks make up about 25% of my meta.
Thoughts:
Ancestral Vision: Hands down one me my first game against Bant Company, I resolved a total of three, one with GDD. Put in work against R/G tron, resolved at least one each game. Sided out the AV against burn for the Dispels and Spellskite, sided out GDD for Kalitas.
Rise//Fall: There were quite a few games where I wanted to bounce a creature, but did not have a creature in my yard (I guess that happens when you only have 8 creatures in your deck). Fall was great though, but in the end I think I am going to up my K-command by one and drop on the the Rise//Fall.
Remand: So I went with Remand to try and make IoK topdecks not suck as bad and to get more value out of Rise//Fall
Liliana of the Veil: Only saw her once, but I saw all three copies that game. Forty minute game against bant company.
22 lands I think I was one cantrip short of running 22 lands. While there were only two games that I noticed it and that could just be variance, I still think I am going to drop a LotV and add the 4th SV.
Is liliana bad with counterspells or does it still work ok?
In all honesty I haven't done enough testing yet to say whether running LotV and counters together is bad or good. However Spell Snare I believe is a must run, regardless of LotV. I am trying out Remand to make discard more relavent in the late game. Also the combination of the instant speed discard K-Command provides plus Remand helps to fight against topdecks. Without AV I don't think counters are as good, but since we got the new toy, may as well try it. One thing I can say though, is I really enjoy playing this deck. It feels very powerful and has a lot of synergies.
Serious question: what is the difference between this and Grixis control? And why are there two different threads for what looks like the same exact type of decks? 0_o
My current brew of "Grixis Control" is closer in line with "Grixis Midrange". I don't use any counters in the 60. Advise and feedback appreciated!
Serious question: what is the difference between this and Grixis control? And why are there two different threads for what looks like the same exact type of decks? 0_o
My current brew of "Grixis Control" is closer in line with "Grixis Midrange". I don't use any counters in the 60. Advise and feedback appreciated!
honestly, with AV being unbanned the two lists are starting to merge. AV makes Jace less important as a CA engine, esp if you're pairing it w/ GDD. I've actually dropped my Jaces and IoK in favor of TitI and Counterspells.
Look at the card. Now back to Jace. Now back to that card, now back to Jace! Sadly, it isn't Jace, but if it stopped being a junk rare and became relevant, it could act like it's Jace. Crack some Worldwake. What do you have? You have a Jace, the card you wish this card could be like. Look again. THE CARD IS NOW A $75 BILL. Anything possible when you play Magic with Jace and not junk rares. This is probably spam.
Serious question: what is the difference between this and Grixis control? And why are there two different threads for what looks like the same exact type of decks? 0_o
My current brew of "Grixis Control" is closer in line with "Grixis Midrange". I don't use any counters in the 60. Advise and feedback appreciated!
honestly, with AV being unbanned the two lists are starting to merge. AV makes Jace less important as a CA engine, esp if you're pairing it w/ GDD. I've actually dropped my Jaces and IoK in favor of TitI and Counterspells.
I've taken the opposite approach. For me Jace was never about the card advantage. It was about the filtering and setting up future draws.
I honestly feel like Jace is the ideal mid-range card. Allows you to recast all of your removal.
honestly, with AV being unbanned the two lists are starting to merge. AV makes Jace less important as a CA engine, esp if you're pairing it w/ GDD. I've actually dropped my Jaces and IoK in favor of TitI and Counterspells.
[1] Agreeing with Axman, having Jace filter away an unneeded late Thing feels good
[2] Wouldn't T1 discard be the safest setup for T2 Thing? To me, safely landing Thing T2 sounds ideal since you get the most early payoff from its big butt and the biggest chance it will flip in a relevant time span. I understand that we don't want to warp our deck and playstyle too much around protecting & flipping Thing but I'm a little conflicted on whether Thing wants to push the deck towards a proactive blue-Jund approach or a more reactive instant speed deck.
honestly, with AV being unbanned the two lists are starting to merge. AV makes Jace less important as a CA engine, esp if you're pairing it w/ GDD. I've actually dropped my Jaces and IoK in favor of TitI and Counterspells.
[1] Agreeing with Axman, having Jace filter away an unneeded late Thing feels good
[2] Wouldn't T1 discard be the safest setup for T2 Thing? To me, safely landing Thing T2 sounds ideal since you get the most early payoff from its big butt and the biggest chance it will flip in a relevant time span. I understand that we don't want to warp our deck and playstyle too much around protecting & flipping Thing but I'm a little conflicted on whether Thing wants to push the deck towards a proactive blue-Jund approach or a more reactive instant speed deck.
Honestly: I feel like there are two different ways to build the deck. Counters and no counters.
I strongly feel that you can build a competitive control deck without the use of counters maindeck. Just look at the Sultai Control list that placed 29th (http://sales.starcitygames.com//deckdatabase/displaydeck.php?DeckID=100798)
That being said: if you are not playing counters you must over-rely on 1 drops. When paired with Jace, it's not the worst thing in the world.
I think with Ancestral Visions and Goblin Dark-Dwellers Grixis control has become the best deck in modern. Additionally, it has other tools such as discard and Lightning Bolt that make it better than other control options. Finally, having maindeck Kolaghan's Command in a meta full of crappy thopter/sword decks is a reason to favor Grixis over say Esper.
However, I don't really like TITI or other creatures. In my experience if you're going to be a control deck, you want to go as deep as possible, and midrange creatures are not really the way to do this. I'm more of a Mystical Teachings type player. However, the other side of the coin is that with AV I really think you want to be running as many cheap answers as possible, including one mana discard, which kinda goes against the Teachings plan. I haven't finalized anything but I'm trying to make something like this work (warning build in progress):
Basically focus on the value creatures with ETB abilities to blank opponent's removal. They have flash so they can be found with Teachings. Should be enough to win along with manlands. Try to both have early interaction and yet also go deeper than everyone else. Maybe the Goblins aren't great here as I don't want to tap out and every other creature has flash.
I took my list to a GPT today for GP Charlotte, and split first and second place. The GPT turnout was pretty small, 4 rounds cut to top 4, but there were 0 eldrazi and the list performed great!
Round 1 Bogles (1-2)
Game one I IoK to take his Daybreak, cast another one to take his Unflinching courage, and snap back a third to take his second Unflinching courage while he beats me down with a gladecover scout and 3 spirit mantles. Game 2 I draw all the hate and he never gets off the ground through Iok, EE, Tribute, and Counter magic. Game 3 I struggle to get underneath him and he topdecks a Daybreak Coronet the turn before I draw a Tribute, which would've sealed up the game for me. Oh well, bad matchup is bad.
Bad start 0-1 Overall so far.
Round 2 Affinity (2-1)
Game 1 he gets me down to 5, and the game boils down to him drawing G. Blast as his only out to me winning the race (I had just about stabilized with a Kalitas on board, but was at 5 and he had an Etched Champion on board). The last turn before I would've killed him through the Champion, he topdecks the Blast he needs and swings in for the kill. Game 2 he comes out of the gate quickly dropping 4 dudes on turn 1, but I leak his cranial plating and drop an izzet staticaster to clean up the mess and flip a jace to seal up the game. Game 3 was close, with him having 2 Relic of Progenitus on the table turning my jace into a merfolk looter. At one point I he taps out to play a ravager and swing with a manland, allowing me to Murderous Cut his ravager and Tribute the Ornithopter he moved the counters to.
Things are going to be okay, just don't lose any more rounds.
1-1 overall
Round 3 Zoo (2-0)
Neat deck piloted by the best aggro player in the area, Game one he plays kird apes, goblin guides and goyfs and I play a bunch of removal until I flip a jace and prevent him from doing anything else. Game 2 I bring in more board wipes and he gets me to 4, but a flipped jace means the only dude to make it to combat step is goblin guide so I can draw a land. I might make it to top 4 after all.
2-1 overall
Round 4 Grishoalbrand (2-1)
This is the last round before cut to top 4 and I have to play it. And this matchup sucks. Game 1 I try to terminate a Griselbrand after fighting over his goryo's, but he kills me anyways. SB I bring in some more counter magic, hard removal, and Bribery (I really wanted to bribery his Griselbrand/Borborygmos/Emrakul for lulz). He gets one griselbrand to swing into a terminate and whiff. The second grisebrand swings, I cast a Tribute, he draws a bunch of cards (down to 2 life) and casts a nourishing shoal with goryo's spliced in (I think, or it was something similar) targeting Borborygmos. I respond by casting countersquall for lethal, forcing him to shoal his only other copy of Borborygmos so he doesn't die. At this point he scoops so we have time for game 3 (I had the rest of the game locked up). Game 3 I have an opener with snap, dispel, terminate, and serum visions. Snap keep. I draw a second snap, drop it EoT turn 2, and whittle him down while he tries to combo. We go to time and I manage to kill him with snap + tar pit on Turn 5 for exactly lethal with snap + dispel backup. Lucky me gets into top 4!
3-1 overall
Round 5 - Top 4 - Merfolk (2-0)
With 2 mb damnations, I take this round and it's not particularly close. Game one he gets me to around 7 before I flip a jace, clear his board and hand, and drop a Kalitas to take over the game. He scoops when I make my 3rd zombie token. Game 2 I bring in more hate and stabilize at 4 life with Jace + Kalitas again.
4-1 overall, split for 1st and 2nd in the finals.
Damn this deck is fun to play, but playing against Etched Champion and Bogles made me miss the TitI build I've been play testing with all week. SoI is going to be good for us, and I'm not going to miss thought scour at all.
this is super close to my list, only thing in not a huge fan of is tasigur, he was good to play on t2 alot but im not a fan of thought scour nor destroying my graveyard for snapcaster or flipping jace sooner. Try Goblin dark dwellers, i play 1/2 and the value with that and vision is just game ending on its own. ( i didnt realize you had scours in this list lol)
In effect, these strategies all overlap and merge together into one place. That thread is basically just a (significantly) more active version of this one. Please reply to this post if you agree/disagree.
I agree, there is a bit of a difference between the decks, I think most people agree it's discard vs counters, but based on the way that other websites classify the decks (MTG Top 8 once had a Grixis List with 4 Delver of Secrets put in the Grixis Control section) I think these two archetypes 50 odd other cards that are the same would allow for meaningful discussion in the same thread.
Look at the card. Now back to Jace. Now back to that card, now back to Jace! Sadly, it isn't Jace, but if it stopped being a junk rare and became relevant, it could act like it's Jace. Crack some Worldwake. What do you have? You have a Jace, the card you wish this card could be like. Look again. THE CARD IS NOW A $75 BILL. Anything possible when you play Magic with Jace and not junk rares. This is probably spam.
I agree, there is a bit of a difference between the decks, I think most people agree it's discard vs counters, but based on the way that other websites classify the decks (MTG Top 8 once had a Grixis List with 4 Delver of Secrets put in the Grixis Control section) I think these two archetypes 50 odd other cards that are the same would allow for meaningful discussion in the same thread.
I do agree that Grixis Delver vs. Grixis Midrange/Control is a separate distinction. Delver imposes a bunch of restrictions that the normal Grixis decks don't have, it generally takes a different deckbuildng form, and its gameplay style and strategy are very different. That said, Grixis Midrange/Control/Blue-Jund all are similar enough that they should be merged. The distinction is more semantical than helpful at this point. Barring objections, I'll merge these later today/this weekend.
Yeah of course sorry my message came out the wrong way, I was just saying that a lot of webstie mash decks together even if they are fairly different, but I think that your idea of midrange and control being close enough is accurate and a good idea, although put the title as Grixis Control/Midrange, just so people know that both are in there would help for clarity.
In effect, these strategies all overlap and merge together into one place. That thread is basically just a (significantly) more active version of this one. Please reply to this post if you agree/disagree.
I would have agreed with a merger before GDD came along, but not currently. With GDD being considered a real thing, Grixis has the potential to further diverge along the Instants (Counters) vs Sorceries (Discards) paths.
Decks that run more powerful catch alls and value cards like Dreadbore over Terminate, Thoughtseize over Spell Snare and Rise // Fall over Cryptic Command will be likely more interested in running JVP over Snaps, GDD over Anglers.
So the strategies diverge now not only at the answers level, but the engine and wincon/threat level as well. There are 2 very distinctive flavors that can be brewed with very few nonland cards in common. At this stage, people are still undecided between the 2 and the builds currently emerging exhibit both types of strategies in their 75. Over time though, I anticipate that the builds will be fine tuned either toward proactive or reactive, and their respective best cards.
In summary, I think the tap-out Grixis thread should be left standing, as in future there would likely be discussion for the tap-out style with GDD/JVP/TS. The other thread sees more activity likely because it 1. predates this thread for the same shard and 2. grixis control is the more well-worn name that people search out.
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If we see lots of meaningful variation down the road around GDD or other cards, a split might eventually be warranted. But for now, I am looking over the past few pages of each thread and the lists are just too similar to justify a split today. Moreover, the distinction is too granular for the average forumgoer to know intuitively or even through experience in the format, which further suggests the split is not currently needed.
If you look back at the earlier pages of this thread it started as "abbot grixis". The more people played with the deck, the more it fell out of favor. I think it was somewhere around page 17ish that it was almost non existent in lists anymore.
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2 Steamvents
1 Watery Grave
1 Bloodcrypt
4 Scalding Tarn
3 Polluted Delta
1 Bloodstained Mire
2 Creeping Tarpit
1 Blackcleave Cliffs
2 Darkslick Shores
2 Island
1 Swamp
1 Mountain
1 Ghost Quarter
4 Snapcaster Mage
2 Jace, Vryn's Prodigy
2 Goblin Darkdwellers
Instants 14
3 Remand
2 Spell Snare
2 Kolagan's Command
4 Lightning Bolt
3 Terminate
Sorecery 13
4x Inquistion of Kozilek
4x Ancestral Vision
3x Serum Visions
2x Rise // Fall
Planeswalker 3
3 Liliana of the Veil
2 Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
2 Spellskite
1 Damnation
2 Slaughter Games
2 Boomerang
2 Dispel
1 Duress
2 Engineered Explosives
1 Other card
G/R Tron 2-0
I was unhappy to be placed against Tron my first round, but I was able to beat him by not allowing any threats by remanding his search spells and discard. Fall was a house here.
R/W Burn 0-2
I stabalize at too low a life against this deck. One more turn each game and they would have been my games. But burn is our worst matchup.
Affinity 1-2
Game one I got demolished, I mulled to 6 and he drops five cards on turn one with a no lander. Turn two Master of Etherium, with a turn three attack that puts me too far behind to catch up.
Game two he drops turn one Vault Skirge and that's it... A slow start, something I can handle. K-command is an allstar this game, go figure.
Game three it went to the wire. I untap with one life, I need a basic land, bolt, terminate, K-command, or boomerang. Drew a Serum Visions into a Remand, oh well.
Bant Company 1-1
On the ticket I lost this match to give the other guy a 3-1 record so he could get prize. We played two games, the first game took forty minutes. Goblin Darkdwellers finally gets there in the end. The second game we had 7 minutes to play. Since I didn't care about the win, I kept a one lander with a Serum Vision hand that I would normally haved mulled. Collected Company decks are a lot of value and targeted removal just runs out against them. I may try to find a second Damnation for my board as some version of company decks make up about 25% of my meta.
Thoughts:
Ancestral Vision: Hands down one me my first game against Bant Company, I resolved a total of three, one with GDD. Put in work against R/G tron, resolved at least one each game. Sided out the AV against burn for the Dispels and Spellskite, sided out GDD for Kalitas.
Rise//Fall: There were quite a few games where I wanted to bounce a creature, but did not have a creature in my yard (I guess that happens when you only have 8 creatures in your deck). Fall was great though, but in the end I think I am going to up my K-command by one and drop on the the Rise//Fall.
Remand: So I went with Remand to try and make IoK topdecks not suck as bad and to get more value out of Rise//Fall
Liliana of the Veil: Only saw her once, but I saw all three copies that game. Forty minute game against bant company.
22 lands I think I was one cantrip short of running 22 lands. While there were only two games that I noticed it and that could just be variance, I still think I am going to drop a LotV and add the 4th SV.
In all honesty I haven't done enough testing yet to say whether running LotV and counters together is bad or good. However Spell Snare I believe is a must run, regardless of LotV. I am trying out Remand to make discard more relavent in the late game. Also the combination of the instant speed discard K-Command provides plus Remand helps to fight against topdecks. Without AV I don't think counters are as good, but since we got the new toy, may as well try it. One thing I can say though, is I really enjoy playing this deck. It feels very powerful and has a lot of synergies.
My current brew of "Grixis Control" is closer in line with "Grixis Midrange". I don't use any counters in the 60. Advise and feedback appreciated!
1x Blood Crypt
1x Bloodstained Mire
2x Creeping Tar Pit
3x Island
1x Mountain
4x Polluted Delta
4x Scalding Tarn
2x Steam Vents
3x Sulfur Falls
1x Swamp
1x Watery Grave
2x Izzet Charm
3x Kolaghan's Command
4x Lightning Bolt
1x Murderous Cut
3x Terminate
Creature (12)
2x Goblin Dark-Dwellers
4x Jace, Vryn's Prodigy
2x Pia and Kiran Nalaar
4x Snapcaster Mage
4x Ancestral Vision
4x Inquisition of Kozilek
4x Serum Visions
Twitter: twitter.com/axmanonline
Stream: twitch.tv/axman
Current Decks
Modern: Affinity
Standard: BW Control
Legacy: Death and Taxes :symw::symr:
Vintage: NA
honestly, with AV being unbanned the two lists are starting to merge. AV makes Jace less important as a CA engine, esp if you're pairing it w/ GDD. I've actually dropped my Jaces and IoK in favor of TitI and Counterspells.
URURxUR
UWUWxUW
I've taken the opposite approach. For me Jace was never about the card advantage. It was about the filtering and setting up future draws.
I honestly feel like Jace is the ideal mid-range card. Allows you to recast all of your removal.
Twitter: twitter.com/axmanonline
Stream: twitch.tv/axman
Current Decks
Modern: Affinity
Standard: BW Control
Legacy: Death and Taxes :symw::symr:
Vintage: NA
[1] Agreeing with Axman, having Jace filter away an unneeded late Thing feels good
[2] Wouldn't T1 discard be the safest setup for T2 Thing? To me, safely landing Thing T2 sounds ideal since you get the most early payoff from its big butt and the biggest chance it will flip in a relevant time span. I understand that we don't want to warp our deck and playstyle too much around protecting & flipping Thing but I'm a little conflicted on whether Thing wants to push the deck towards a proactive blue-Jund approach or a more reactive instant speed deck.
Honestly: I feel like there are two different ways to build the deck. Counters and no counters.
I strongly feel that you can build a competitive control deck without the use of counters maindeck. Just look at the Sultai Control list that placed 29th (http://sales.starcitygames.com//deckdatabase/displaydeck.php?DeckID=100798)
That being said: if you are not playing counters you must over-rely on 1 drops. When paired with Jace, it's not the worst thing in the world.
Twitter: twitter.com/axmanonline
Stream: twitch.tv/axman
Current Decks
Modern: Affinity
Standard: BW Control
Legacy: Death and Taxes :symw::symr:
Vintage: NA
However, I don't really like TITI or other creatures. In my experience if you're going to be a control deck, you want to go as deep as possible, and midrange creatures are not really the way to do this. I'm more of a Mystical Teachings type player. However, the other side of the coin is that with AV I really think you want to be running as many cheap answers as possible, including one mana discard, which kinda goes against the Teachings plan. I haven't finalized anything but I'm trying to make something like this work (warning build in progress):
2 Goblin Dark-Dwellers
1 Vendillion Clique
4 Ancestral Visions
4 Inquisition of Kozilek
4 Damnation
3 Mystical Teachings
3 Kolaghan's Command
2 Spell Snare
2 Negate
1 Murderous Cut
1 Terminate
Basically focus on the value creatures with ETB abilities to blank opponent's removal. They have flash so they can be found with Teachings. Should be enough to win along with manlands. Try to both have early interaction and yet also go deeper than everyone else. Maybe the Goblins aren't great here as I don't want to tap out and every other creature has flash.
this is super close to my list, only thing in not a huge fan of is tasigur, he was good to play on t2 alot but im not a fan of thought scour nor destroying my graveyard for snapcaster or flipping jace sooner. Try Goblin dark dwellers, i play 1/2 and the value with that and vision is just game ending on its own. ( i didnt realize you had scours in this list lol)
anyways good job on the split man.
BRU Grixis Control/delver URB
standard:
BWUEsper controlUWB
legacy:
UWRMiraclesRWU
http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/the-game/modern/developing-competitive-modern/603567-grixis-control
In effect, these strategies all overlap and merge together into one place. That thread is basically just a (significantly) more active version of this one. Please reply to this post if you agree/disagree.
URURxUR
UWUWxUW
I do agree that Grixis Delver vs. Grixis Midrange/Control is a separate distinction. Delver imposes a bunch of restrictions that the normal Grixis decks don't have, it generally takes a different deckbuildng form, and its gameplay style and strategy are very different. That said, Grixis Midrange/Control/Blue-Jund all are similar enough that they should be merged. The distinction is more semantical than helpful at this point. Barring objections, I'll merge these later today/this weekend.
I would have agreed with a merger before GDD came along, but not currently. With GDD being considered a real thing, Grixis has the potential to further diverge along the Instants (Counters) vs Sorceries (Discards) paths.
Decks that run more powerful catch alls and value cards like Dreadbore over Terminate, Thoughtseize over Spell Snare and Rise // Fall over Cryptic Command will be likely more interested in running JVP over Snaps, GDD over Anglers.
So the strategies diverge now not only at the answers level, but the engine and wincon/threat level as well. There are 2 very distinctive flavors that can be brewed with very few nonland cards in common. At this stage, people are still undecided between the 2 and the builds currently emerging exhibit both types of strategies in their 75. Over time though, I anticipate that the builds will be fine tuned either toward proactive or reactive, and their respective best cards.
In summary, I think the tap-out Grixis thread should be left standing, as in future there would likely be discussion for the tap-out style with GDD/JVP/TS. The other thread sees more activity likely because it 1. predates this thread for the same shard and 2. grixis control is the more well-worn name that people search out.
BGW Elves BGW|BW Tokens BW|WBR Sword&ShieldWBR|BUG DelverBUG|UWR Kiki UWR | UR Storm UR
http://mtgtop8.com/event?e=12307&d=270978&f=MO
Decks I'm playing in Modern right now:
URB Grixis Reveler (http://www.mtgvault.com/supast4r7/decks/modern-grixis-reveler/)
UB Faeries (http://www.mtgvault.com/supast4r7/decks/ub-fae-2/)
UW Azorious Control (http://www.mtgvault.com/supast4r7/decks/modern-ojutai-control-2/)